Chinese celebrate Lantern Festival at home, abroad

Some children of Chinese origin recite Chinese poem in Putonghua (common speech of the Chinese language) during a celebration of Lantern Festival in New York, Feb. 11, 2006. The celebration was held in New York on Saturday, drawing many Chinese overseas to participate to mark the yearly Chinese traditional Lantern Festival.

Jennifer Wanjiru, wife of Chinese herb doctor Liu Fengchen, holds a dish of lantern dumplings in Nairobi, Kenya, on Feb. 12, 2006. The couple has made more than 1,000 lantern dumplings for their relatives and friends, as they prepare to greet their first Lantern Festival in Kenya on Feb. 12. Chinese Lantern Festival is the 15th day of the Chinese lunar new year, which fell on Sunday this year.

A group of people perform flower drums in Jinan of east China's Shandong Province on Feb. 12, 2006. People from all parts of Shandong performed different kinds of traditional folk arts, as waist drum, flower drum, stilts and dragons dance to celebrate the Lantern Festival, which falls on Feb. 12 this year.

Representatives of Chinese overseas in New York compete in a game of making sweet dumplings in New York, United States, Feb. 11, 2006.

The prisoner Gao (C) eats sweet dumplings with his wife and daughter at a prison in Beijing, Feb. 12, 2006. The prison of Beijing railway police station is immersed in a festival atmosphere during the Chinese traditional lantern festival. Some 20 prisoners eat sweet dumplings with their family members, spending the time of a special "reunion festival".

Residents guess riddles written on lanterns in front of a shopping mall in Nanchang, capital of central China's Jiangxi Province, Feb.12, 2006. As it's Chinese Lantern Festival that day, people from all over China celebrate it in various traditional ways.